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POLITICO 44

On this day in 1971, the General Services administrator officially certified the adoption of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the national voting age to 18.

In the middle of the Vietnam War, when young men ineligible to vote were nonetheless subject to the draft, Congress and state lawmakers had been pressed to approve the amendment.

Its proponents revived the slogan, “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote.” This dated to World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for lowering the draft age to 18.

On March 10, the Senate voted 94-0 for the amendment. The House went along 13 days later, 401-19. Within seven weeks, three-fourths of state legislators had ratified the change — the shortest time ever to adopt a proposed constitutional amendment.

Congress initially had lowered the voting age as part of the Voting Rights Act of 1970, which was an extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

On June 22, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon signed the law, though voicing “misgivings” over its constitutionality.

In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court upheld the legislation. But it ruled that the law applied only to federal elections — after Oregon and Texas had challenged its constitutionality.

Justice Hugo Black wrote, “Congress has exceeded its powers in attempting to lower the voting age in state and local elections.”

Without a constitutional amendment, states choosing not to lower the voting age to 18 would have had to maintain two sets of registries to provide separate ballots solely for federal elections to would-be voters ages 18-20.

Since then, no court case has tested whether Congress possesses the power to prevent states from lowering their voting age to under 18 for federal elections. Congress has never sought to ban states from doing so.